


the abs have it

by orphan_account



Category: Red Dwarf
Genre: Gen, Missing Scene, Series I
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-14
Updated: 2015-07-14
Packaged: 2018-04-09 08:53:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4342088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I've always thought it seemed terribly unListerlike for Deb to have "headless ab shot" posters in her locker. Yeah, it could just be a difference between her and Dave... But isn't it more fun for it to be all Rimmer's fault?</p>
            </blockquote>





	the abs have it

Deb had been looking for Rimmer all evening. She'd checked all the usual places and even each of Rimmer's weird little hiding spots in between, but her search had proved fruitless. She’d finally decided that she'd rather go back to their sleeping quarters and get drunk than waste another minute driving along the empty corridors. The monotony of it always deeply depressed her and it threatened to extinguish her severely ticked off fire. 

Naturally, since Rimmer was such an intensely aggravating sort of smegger, she was already there in their quarters when Deb arrived. She'd probably spent ages sneaking about, purposefully avoiding Deb, just so she could slither back here first and act like nothing happened. 

Rimmer was lying on her bunk, ankles crossed, holding up a holobook like Deb was supposed to believe she was actually reading it. _Yeah, right_. Deb knew a wind-up when she saw one. It was her main hobby lately, after all. 

"All right," she said from the doorway, hoping that her eyeroll was conveyed adequately in the tone of her voice. "Where are they?"

"I'm busy, Lister." Rimmer turned a page in what was probably yet another crap biography of Julia Caesar, but otherwise didn't move from her cozy position. "Kindly go flush yourself down a toilet somewhere."

"Not until you tell me what you've done with my posters."

Rimmer heaved a great put-upon sigh and lowered the book. Her face was blank -- Too blank for Deb's liking. Very clearly faked! 

"To which posters are you referring? The idiot footballer or the idiot island?" 

"The idiot actors!" Deb snapped before thinking, she made a face when she realised what she'd said but shook her head and plunged on. Walking over to open her locker, she clarified: "The posters of Marlon Brando and James Dean that I had hung up in my locker that you replaced with these!" 

She motioned to them each. They were totally gross and objectifying and if Deb had taken a second look at them when she'd first found them it was just so she could get properly disgusted. Not because looking at a blue-tinted close-up of really, really, _really ripped_ abs and pecs interested her at all. No way.

Rimmer grinned immediately, huge and smug as she flung her holobook down beside her and crossed her arms over her chest. " _Well, Lister_! If I had done, I'd thank myself for making a much needed improvement to the decor around here. Unf!"

"Much needed improvement? Rimmer, this is sacrilege!" 

Rimmer scoffed, but didn't argue. "Yes, well. I still fail to see what this has to do with me. I obviously had nothing to do with it."

"Oh, stop pretending that it wasn't you! We both know that it was you!"

"Lister, Lister, Lister. I know logic is so difficult for you, but you really must try it out sometimes." Rimmer shifted until she was sitting on the edge of her bunk, her expression a mask of patronizing concern. "All right, tell me this: How do you propose that I might have been able to commit said theft, eh? As I am no longer of the living, and merely a Hologramatic projection of my former self, I am entirely incorporeal and thus incapable of removing said posters from said interior of said door of said locker and, in fact, of even touching anything non-Hologramatic at all in any way. Ergo, it can't have been me!" Rimmer held out her hands as an example of her innocence, but Deb could see the smirk pulling at the corner of her lips. “Explain it to me, Lister. Please.”

Deb just leveled her gaze. " _Rimmer_."

" _Lister_ ," Rimmer said in an exaggerated mimic of Deb's accent. 

"Fine, okay. I'll play your sick little game. You had the skutters do it."

Rimmer squinted at the lockers, one finger tapping her chin thoughtfully as she bit her lip. "Hmm, yes. But you're forgetting that the skutters are too short to reach."

"The dog, then. You had Dog take them down."

Rimmer slapped her knee and let out a hearty chuckle before getting up from her bunk. "Please, you're grasping at straws! You know that filthy mongrel never listens to me."

"Fine!" Deb let out a frustrated sound and grabbed her hat off her head. She'd have chucked it at Rimmer if the bleedin' thing wouldn't've passed right through the self-satisfied arsehole. "You know what? I don't care how you did it. I want my things back now. Right now, Rimmer."

"But I don't have them," Rimmer said, in a nearly sing-song voice. Then she cleared her throat and adjusted her belt and stepped over to Deb in that way she had when she thought she was trying to talk to Deb ' _woman-to-woman_ '. "Anyway, what's the difference? You look at the others because they're pleasing to the eye, right? What's not pleasing about these ones?"

Deb looked at the posters and then back to Rimmer incredulously. "They don't even have heads, Rimmer! _Come on_!"

Rimmer cocked an eyebrow. "What's a man need a head for?"

"That's where his brain is!"

Rimmer then waggled the eyebrow. "I say again: What's a man need a head for?"

"Ugh!" Deb put some space between them, giving Rimmer a nasty look as she screwed her hat back onto her head. Just something to do with her hands since throttling Rimmer was out of the question. "No more, Rimmer. _No. More._ I want my posters."

"Oh, this is beyond ridiculous," Rimmer clucked her tongue, shaking her head as she walked over to pick up her book and then started for the door. "I'm obviously not going to be able to get any reading done in here, so I'll excuse myself."

"Fine," Deb said, feeling irritated that she hadn't been able to get Rimmer to break and admit that she'd cooked up the scheme. She leaned on the ladder and put her foot up on Rimmer’s mattress, dragging her boot around a bit for good measure. "Go on and leave. I'll help myself to something of yours while you're gone, then."

"A-Ha!" Rimmer spun around, pointing an accusing finger at Deb. "But you already have done, haven't you?"

And with that, it all made sense.

Well, it made Rimmer-sense, anyway.

"Is that what all this is about? Your stupid shirt?" Deb rolled her eyes, ignoring Rimmer grinning nastily and puffing out her chest like she'd just finished climbing Olympus Mons. "You're so petty. I can't believe it."

"Why? Because I've done exactly what you insist on doing to me? Violated _your_ privacy, tampered with _your_ possessions, and completely ignored _your_ personal boundaries?"

"Okay, _okay_. I get it." Deb sighed and squinted up at the ceiling for a long moment. She really hated this part. Nothing was worse than Rimmer marching about, smirking, so bloody proud of herself. "I'm sorry I took your things before, and I promise that I won't do it again."

"Was that so hard?" 

_Yes_ , Deb thought but didn't say. She brushed invisible grime from the ladder rung. "You got what you wanted, Rimmer. Just tell me where my posters are."

"Oh, floating in our wake, somewhere hundreds and hundreds of miles away, I imagine. I had that moronic fleabag give them to the skutters to flush out the airlock after he replaced them for me."

Later, after Rimmer'd gone and Deb had finished wincing from the thought of the last ever posters of Marlon Brando and James Dean floating eternally through deep space, she opened up her locker to stare dejectedly at her new posters.

Sure, she could've torn them down; but then the bare spots would always be there to remind Rimmer that she'd got one over on Deb and that was a thought too terrible to bear.

No, obviously she'd have to keep them there forever now.

Rimmer couldn't be allowed to bask in her victory. She'd have to be made to think that Deb had changed her mind about the posters. Yeah, Rimmer’d have to be made to think she’d changed her mind and totally loved the new posters now, thank you very much. 

Deb grinned to herself as she grabbed a few beers, imagining already how Rimmer would react when the realisation she hadn't won at all started to sink in. She climbed up onto her bunk and cracked the first beer open, sighing happily as it sprayed out as she knew from experience that some of the drips would get on Rimmer’s bunk down below.

“Here’s to you, smeghead.” She blew a kiss in the direction Rimmer had traveled and set to getting drunk as messily as possible.

**Author's Note:**

> For "reference", the abs in question:  
> 
> 
> ETA: While discussing this idea IRL, I realized that I sort of screwed up the opposites thing. But, uh, let's handwave it by saying Marilyn Monroe, Marlon Brando, and James Dean are just universal constants.


End file.
